


Freedom From Phantoms Not Here To Be Fought

by TrashyTime



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: M/M, Nothing graphic is directly mentioned, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but it managed to work itself in in details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26658841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashyTime/pseuds/TrashyTime
Summary: Geralt and Dettlaff meet shortly after Geralt's first disastrous nights on the Path. He turns to him often, and when he feels guilty and torn up from Blavikin, Dettlaff is there to pick up the pieces.When Dettlaff finally gets the key to Regis's cell, locked as he is in Tesham Mutna, he barely has to ask for help before Geralt is ready to do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes, however, may be a lot more than Geralt ever imagined before he stepped foot into those dark tunnels.Originally made as a treat for Hobbit of Darkest Night 2020, but then the mental telepathy wormed it's way in.
Relationships: Dettlaff van der Eretein/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	Freedom From Phantoms Not Here To Be Fought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/gifts).



> WARNING: Regis is described as having suffered unmentioned horrors and tortures. IF rape or a complete lack of personal ability to defend oneself is triggering, or if mental telepathy and unreliable narrator is triggering, PLEASE do not read this fic. 
> 
> Both are very much present if not mentioned explicitly for the former, and this fic can be read a few different ways, quite intentionally. This is a dark fest fill. Please, while it does end on a reasonably cheerful note- be aware of your self care needs.

Geralt shudders as another echoing wail rises from the dark passages ahead of them. Dettlaff winces in that tiny little motion that has come to mean so much to Geralt in the last decade. 

Dettlaff had met him immediately after that horrible first town, while out on the road, and his companionship meant more to Geralt than any being not his brothers. Dettlaff was the one person, even amongst his fellow Wolf Witchers, that he trusted to be in his mind. Geralt would do most anything for Eskel without hesitation. Dettlaff existed at that same level, after all these years. Dettlaff was who he turned to after Blavikin, when he could not bear to face Eskel. 

Dettlaff had barely had to ask for this favor, and Geralt was packing in and making his way towards Roach. The details hardly mattered, he trusts Dettlaff in a way he can not trust himself anymore. He can rarely sleep for the depth of his nightmares most nights, and while he might have once balked at the idea that this other vampire might need, a deeper bond to recover himself, Geralt can understand that. Geralt himself has struggled with clinging to the comfort of Dettlaff’s presence, while they traveled together on the roads, parting before entering towns. 

Dettlaff says that they need to release a blood brother from his torture and imprisonment, then they both need to be there to rescue him from whatever torment Vampires use to punish their own. That is the beginning and the end of it for Geralt. That even the sparse details make something twist in his belly is neither here nor there.

There is a fetid, heavy weight to the air- the mental tang of anguish and torture palpable despite only the faintest details slipping free in discussing exactly what imprisonment in Tesham Mutna means. Dettlaff has always seen Humanity and their ilk from a different perspective than most of his kind. If he says, so softly, that this Regis was one of the brightest of their generation- if once addicted, then Geralt trusts that whatever- whoever they release, will be worth any struggles and fighting it takes to reach them both mentally and physically. 

There is fighting, blood is spilled, thankfully very little of Geralt’s own. He knows he’s not here just for fighting, Dettlaff has stopped hiding much of his own power over the decades they have traveled together off and on. 

When they get to the cage itself, get to the wailing source of the echoing cries- Geralt is reminded of just how monstrous sentient species always are to other thinking beings. The cage is suspended over a pit- all the grooves and channels of the whole complex meet below it, rivulets of blood close enough to smell but never touch. The hands and arms and neck are locked in stocks, the ankles locked to the bottom of the cage, and what clothes remain are rotted- ragged scraps that show the colors and patterns of clothing that was out of style even in his youth. They are torn open at the back, showing unblemished leathery skin. That skin’s unscarred appearance is marked as the horrible false comfort it is by the rotted scent of blood and other fluids that matt the scraps of fabric and hair that hangs limply down the knobs of his spine. 

The face, paired with desperate and dazed eyes that stare at them, is inhuman in a most fundamental way. Where normally there is only the slightest hints that a higher vampire is not human, the bat-like hybrid before them sports fangs a palm long, some wider than a finger, ears and wrinkled face more resembling the blood hungry bats of the lowlands than anything human. Even the hands edge closer to talons than hands in truth. The next wail has tones to it, thrumming and rattling over themselves as this wretch, Regis, tries to both shy away and move closer to Geralt’s trickling blood. 

Geralt frowns, wiping away the blood on his temple, brows quirking up. “You said, decades before you met me, you were trying to get that key?” A nearer century of what looked to be repeated torturings- being defenseless and broken down- trapped next to food but never fed… Geralt knows in his bones that whatever this Vampire did, nothing deserves this. 

Dettlaff makes a pained sound, his whole body seeming to thrum to some unheard beat before he is across the room in a bare blink of motion. He presses his palm near to the cage, and is snarled at for thanks. The thrashing of the form in the cage is painful to watch, horrifying in it’s ineffectual and stunted violence. Geralt feels, again, the weight of how awful this place is to his senses he can not name. All the little details that scream themselves into his awareness despite how he wants so badly to look away from any of them. 

“How are we doing this?” He asks it, almost angry sounding, but Dettlaff knows him too well to think Geralt is angry at him. It truly had been enough for Dettlaff to say he needed him. Needed to save his brother. Needed to go see if there was any part of his brother still remaining.

Unsaid, but well heard to Geralt, was the fear that he would not be able to do this alone. Not for strength of arms but strength of emotion. Something Geralt could understand all too well. Dettlaff shook himself and his entire chest seemed to expand as he dragged in air before letting out a slow breath. 

Those talented and dexterous fingers, so often creating some small frivolity, move to undo the latches. The key he pulls from within his coat pocket is heavy, the demetrium seeming to be a sinking quiet spot in the otherwise thrumming air. Dettlaff’s voice seems louder than it is when said over that stillness. “We gather him, and we take him home.” 

It’s that simple for him, as he stares at the trapped figure with the same devotion and upset that Geralt would Eskel in the same conditions. Dettlaff had mentioned having struggled to get that key since the day Regis was locked in here. 

It had been telling, just how horrible this place was, even before they had arrived. Now, Geralt swore that he would never wish such a robust lifespan as Higher Vampires have, on any creature. Any story with tales of eternal life and perfect healing… were horror stories. And this, Tesham Mutna, was proof of that. 

There is always a new horror, if you live long enough to see it. Always a new stomach churning memory to spring out at your subconscious in the small hours of the moonless night. Geralt keeps watch on the many entrances, eyes drawn back to the crouched form and comforting lines of his lover. Those hands, so adept at creating from wood and fibers and pigments, move in comforting strokes. The rattling presence of words not spoken, the ants down his spine feeling of Dettlaff speaking with his mind but not hearing it in his own, moved over and through him. 

Geralt trusts Dettlaff, has to, because every fibre of his being says there is no way to recover from this. This is all the horrors of his days trapped strapped to a table, but neverending. No hope of death. No promise of release one way or another. There would be no Eskel. No trainer. Not even the promise of his own body failing him if he didn’t manage to hold on. Geralt’s grip tightens on his sheathed sword, and his teeth squeak louder than his gloves as he shifts his weight on his feet. 

There are eyes watching him, familiar and not. Eyes that seem to see into him, a new itching feel of pressure along his mind, of inhumanity curling itself into the cracked facade of his own illusion of humanity. He swallows, then does so again before blinking away the heavy weight that sits clawing at itself within his throat. He flexes his wrists to feel the movement, the phantom tightness and ache just a fleeting memory. Same with how he squeaks his teeth to prove the leather is not between them. He shudders, weight shifting subtly from foot to foot, far too much motion for any straps to some long blasted to charcoal lab table. 

He focuses himself back on the tableau before him, except where there was once snarling teeth and frantic motion against unmoving metal, there is now the hulking form, unfettered, rotted clothes stripped off and a heavy traveling cloak draped around the form as if covering the naked skin can protect them all from the memories that must have been pressed into it as surely as mages pressed them into Geralt’s body so long ago. 

There is nothing stopping the form from moving now, freedom returned to those talons and fangs. Yet the head that tilts to the side, scenting the air almost lazily, is not slavering or howling. Just, standing on his own two talon twisted feet, a head taller than the large form of Dettlaff, even with how he is now subtly leaning on him. That itching is now a slow tickle, as if fingers are petting the back of his mind as gently as an awed child pets a bunny after being taught to use a soft touch. 

Geralt feels a shiver, a quaking that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the cloying overwhelming scent of rot and decay and stringent witch hazel from where the mages- He draws in a breath and there is that inhuman head so close to his, fangs close enough, that tongue right there and he expects to be licked. He expects to be consumed and to hurt and ache and have to fight, yet instead there are grimy claws gently pressing the clean edge of a cloak along the mostly healed edge of his scrape. 

There is a large forehead, wrinkled and leathery, pressing to his own, breathing calm to counter his own far too rapid ones. He shudders through a breath, then another, pressed forehead to forehead with a Vampire that has nothing of the veneer of civility and humanity. Yet Geralt feels safer, without any good cause or reason, than he ever has within a human town. 

The weight of that mind, pressing to his and telling him without words, that they are safe, that they are free, that they are familyclantogether, is it’s own warmth. He doesn’t know when his hands are fisted in the cloak, and he can’t say exactly how they walk out of that awful ruin. He barely can care about the trip to Dettlaff’s cabin, curled into the side of an ever smaller and softer form when not feeding or caring for himself. That his shadow seems to learn how to bathe from helping him, and eat from mirroring him, and eventually, to change his face, while watching Geralt shave his own, is all secondary to that feeling. 

When he leans in to kiss Regis, it is as comfortable and wonderfully impossible as the first kiss he shared with Dettlaff. None of the weight of worry or guilt that settled in him whenever he thought of Eskel. The soft grey tufts of hair, the human looking skin, but those eyes are the same ones that he has learned to love without any of the trappings of humanity. They all wear their human selves like cloaks, to wrap up and stay warm in, to hide under. 

They’re bonded, a vampire family, in ways that the trials, the Path, can not accomplish. A smooth hand, soft and stained with potions ingredients, traces along his temple, the edge of a thumb tracing the barely perceptible scar that bloomed from their first meeting. “Your brothers, you worry about them often.” That voice is so soothing, something wonderful to hear after so many months without many words at all. 

Geralt shudders through a long breath, pressing up into the palm with a small nod that surprises himself. “Yes. They- don’t have this.” He didn’t realize that was part of his guilt till he said it. Regis is good at that. He can lead Geralt or Dettlaff into talking themselves through self discoveries, in much the same way Dettlaff can talk Bruxa into helping him no matter how they might want otherwise at first. 

Regis made a small humming noise, contemplative and happy, warm where his mind curled alongside Geralt’s own like a lazy cat. “They could, no reason we can’t save your brothers, as you helped save me.” 

Geralt wants to argue, to say they aren’t shackled, aren’t caged. But he remembers with absolute clarity how from the beginning it was not as much him saving Regis, as them saving each other. Geralt talks more, smiles, and his dreams are pleasant as often as unpleasant. Shackles, need not be physical. 

“Yeah, we’ll have to talk about that later. I think I want to continue kissing for now.” he can’t talk about Eskel, or the guilt he feels, without choking on it. But, maybe, later. After. For now, he leans into the impossible kiss. Into being loved so absolutely that he can feel it in his bones. “Also sex, Kissing and Sex.” 

Regis gives a bark of laughter, falling to the bed with Geralt, the crinkling of his human seeming eyes giving away the mirth even as their lips press heat into each other. For the moment, that is all they need.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are fuel. 
> 
> This is not beta'd at all. See something say something, please, but also please be kind while doing so.


End file.
